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Science for Kids: Water bottle fountain

Jul 25, 2012

A little while back while watching our favourite kid's show together, Play School (Australia), we saw them do a very cool experiment that we just had to have a go of ourselves.

This experiment allows children to see that air takes up room and is always present even though we can't see it.

Ages: 2 -12+

(see the bottom on how to simplify or extend to meet the needs of your child)

Materials:

Empty water bottle

balloon

straw

blu-tac (or similar)

tray for catching the water (optional. You could always do it outside, in a bath, or near a sink)

Begin by blowing up a balloon and asking your child "What is in the balloon?"

Let the balloon go and talk about what happens.

Next: Take the empty water bottle and ask your child "What is in the bottle?"

Blow up the balloon again and place the mouth of the balloon over the empty bottle without letting too much air escape.

Ask your child, "Why isn't the balloon going down?"

Investigating to see if she can see why the balloon is not going down.

Explain that the balloon is not going down because the bottle is full of air so the air inside the balloon has no where to escape.

Now, to make the water bottle fountain

Carefully, with a pen, poke a hole in the empty bottle just big enough for a straw to poke through and seal with blue tac. (This is the hardest part of the activity and is best done by an adult. If the bottle is wet, the blu-tac will be hard to stick)

Ask your child, "What do you think will happen if we pour water in?"

Pour water into the bottle over the level of the hole.

(NOTE: Make sure that your straw is pointing up, (unlike what's pictured here) and that you fill the water so that it's level with the very top of the straw.. this is because water will level itself out so anything above the top of the straw will probably come out)

Plug any leaks that you have by squishing down the blu-tac.

At this point with the water at the same level as the top of the straw, it will not come out.

This, you can see was quite surprising for her :)

Blow up the balloon, hold it closed and put the mouth over the top of the bottle.

Let go, and wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! a fabulous fountain!

She loved that you could see the balloon go down as the water streamed out the straw

She understood that "the air in the balloon pushed down on the water and forced it up the straw."

But she especially loved it when the balloon ran out of air and the water fountain did some funny last spits before stopping!

Handy Tips:

- Simplify this activity by not questioning your child as much and just letting them experience the joy of the water spouting out the straw as the balloon. Do the very start of the activity with the air and let it rush out on their fingers or toes and then ask them what's in the balloon or tell them that what was in the balloon was air. When you show them the water fountain experiment, tell them that the air in the balloon is pushing down on the water like it did on their toes, so the water goes up the straw.

- Extend this activity by having your child make the prediction about what they think is going to happen etc. You could even extend as far as having them write a report on it or write it up properly with a hypothesis etc.

- Allow your child to manipulate or be in control of as many of the steps as they are capable of.

- Talkwith your
child about what they are doing. This will help them understand the physical
and mental processes they are going through as well as giving them the
vocabulary to describe it.

- Use new language and
descriptive words like, "invisible" and "pressure." This will help with their
language development.

- Listen to your child talk as they go through their
experiences. This will help you determine where they are at with their
learning, knowledge and understanding and help you to develop the activity (or
future activities) to their level and interests.

111 comments:

Great step by step post. I especially like your suggestions for helping to explain the science behind. Sometimes we rush through just to see the end results and miss the important science ideas behind it all. Will try this with my kids since a few months ago they made their own water fountains using small hand pumps they had from a different toy. Thanks it will keep us occupied tomorrow!

My 5 yr old saw this on my screen last night and practically insisted we do it today! It was so fun, for me too! Do you mind if I post about it with a big ole link to you? I always give credit where credit is due!

Love finding new experiments to add to my to do list! This is brilliant and so easy cant wait till my wee boy is old enough to participate in things like this :) Loving the photos as well your wee girl looks so excited and just makes me want to do this even more!

Love your daughter's fascination with this! Her facial expressions are priceless! What do you have under the bottle catching all the water? Is it a round tray? We do most of our science outside to contain the mess. I need something like that to do more inside.

Love your daughter's fascination with this! Her facial expressions are priceless! What do you have under the bottle catching all the water? Is it a round tray? We do most of our science outside to contain the mess. I need something like that to do more inside.

How great! I love the fun experiment! Thank you for sharing this at Saturday Show and Tell. I can't wait to see what you have for this week! I look forward to seeing you there. -Mackenziehttp://www.cheeriosandlattes.com

This is such a cool thing to do with the kids! I love that you can adapt it to different ages. Thank you so much for sharing this post with our Bonbon Break readers this week! I know they are going to love this post and your site as much as I do!

I chose this post as one of my 'Montessori top 12 in 2012'. I used a Pinterest pin of your graphic so please let me know if this is not OK. You can see the post here http://montessoriconfessions.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-top-montessori-12-in-2012.html

Hi there. Sorry to hear you had difficulties. As you can see by the pic I had to use quite a bit of blu tac (I used that brand.. I'm not sure if other brands work as well?)and really smooth it over the hole and quite a way around it to ensure it was stuck well. You have to do that before the bottle gets wet because once it's wet at all it doesn't seem to stick (I've done this experiment a couple of times). Modelling clay might work but I've not tested that at all. I guess it could be possible to use tape but you'd have to do it in a way that didn't crush the straw. All the best with it. I'll give it some more thought. Some water proof gap filler would work haha. :)

Thanks so much for this great idea! Photos are wonderful, and the directions are easy to follow. Can't wait to do! Thanks for linking up at our STEM-themed Linky Party! http://www.stemmom.org/2013/01/stem-themed-linky-party-1.html

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